The New York Yankees may not have made the playoffs, but they did wind up with one of the biggest stories of the year in the farewell tour of their longtime closer and one of Major League Baseball’s true gentleman superstars, Mariano Rivera. It all came to a head last night with the Tampa Bay Rays, still in the thick of the American League’s Wild Card race, defeating the Yankees, but nobody cares about the score, because it was Rivera’s last pitching appearance in Yankee Stadium. Presumably ever, unless Joe Girardi pulls off the miracle of all miracles and figures out a way to help Mo return all of the gifts he received from other teams.

All obvious hero worship aside, I’m really waiting for a national columnist to step forward with the “Mariano Rivera wasn’t as good as everyone is pretending” troll piece. (UPDATE: Nevermind, it already exists.) It has to be coming. It’s 2013 after all, and we’re ripe for contrarian nonsense that rapes journalism’s dead corpse for the sake of page views.

In the meantime, stay tuned for my slideshow of Kate Upton pictures that remind me of Mariano Rivera’s best games.

It wasn’t a troll piece. They paired it with Jayson Stark’s 21 Stats piece praising Mo. And Caple wasn’t saying any negative opinions to stir up controversy, he was just stating facts. Mariano is the best ever at what he does (cue Chris Jericho replies), but what he does is less important than 10 other roles in baseball. The numbers agree.